


Slow Crawl

by Marasa



Series: Dynamic Stretching [17]
Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Bandaids, Blood, Body Horror, Hurt, Injury, M/M, first aid kit, wound
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-22
Updated: 2018-01-22
Packaged: 2019-03-08 02:30:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13448649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marasa/pseuds/Marasa
Summary: Josh’s first aid kit is cool.





	Slow Crawl

Josh’s first aid kit is cool.

It’s got neon green and pink duct tape wrapped all around it. It’s brimming with colorful bandaids because Josh is a drummer and he’s always slicing open his fingers on long splinters of broken drumsticks.

There are thick drops of blood spattered all over his drum skins. Some is smeared on the floor under his stool. Some is on the wall.

Tyler sits cross-legged on the floor of Josh’s basement and stares at the dried drops of blood staining plaster as Josh helps him peel off his shirt.

It’s easy, mostly, but the pull of fabric against the wet spot over Tyler's shoulder blade where he’s bled through his shirt hurts. He’s panting and gasping as Josh’s bandaid-wrapped fingers peel the last of the sopping wet threads from the throbbing wounds on his back.

The dirty shirt is thrown on the drum set next to them.

“How bad is it?”

What looks to be over one-hundred small bandaids cluttered all over his shoulder blade are bled through. They fall from him and onto the floor with a faint sound similar to that of a wet towel hitting cement. The bloody sight looks as if Tyler were a reptile shedding his scales in the most violent way possible. 

Tyler tries to breathe as best he can but it feels like the end of days is pouring through the gashes torn into his shoulder.

“Bad,” Josh says.

Josh doesn’t have anything bigger than finger-sized bandaids in his first aid kit. He doesn't have disinfectant or anti-bacterial cream either, but they make due because Tyler doesn’t even have a first aid kit.

Tyler thinks if he did, it wouldn’t be nearly as cool as Josh’s.

The vodka bottle beside them is opened. Josh pours it over the shredded skin of his shoulder blade.

Tyler gasps in the cascade of torture. 

“Tyler, Tyler,” Josh whispers soothingly to him, repeating his name over and over because that’s the only thing that Tyler understands when his mind is overrun with white-hot pain.

Josh dabs away the liquid with a towel. He brushes it softly downward over the wounds of his shoulder to help the rest of the bandaids peel from his skin.

What is left over is a gory image of mangled flesh concentrated in the area of Tyler’s shoulder blade. It looks as if he were maimed by a cluster of knives, cut open, shredded. It’s been a week and it still hasn’t stopped bleeding.

In the deepest of the wounds, something small can barely be seen poking out past blood and flesh. 

Josh tries to grab it with the fingernails of his thumb and index finger but he’s sliding against slippery droplets of blood and faltering at the sheer small size of it.

His finger slips and Josh is poking a few centimeters into the gashes in Tyler’s skin with every miscalculated pinch. Tyler hisses as Josh repeats this over and over as he tries his best to grab the foreign object.

The distracted apologies Josh gives don’t help much. Tyler knows he won’t stop until he grabs it.

They’ve done this before; they know it takes a little time.

Tyler feels the moment Josh grabs a hold of the tiny object pushing through his skin. He can also feel the slow crawl of blood inching down his back to his hip.

“Ready?” Josh’s voice is apologetically tender. Tyler's voice is broken.

Josh tugs. The object slices like glass as it's plucked from him. His whole spine shutters, his heart hurts.

It's agony.

It takes a moment for Tyler to catch his breath. He's almost sure he’s going to pass out on the basement floor but he never does. He’s always conscious for the worst of it, no matter how much he wishes his body would just give up.

When Tyler’s breathing has mostly leveled and his woozy swaying has stopped, Josh’s hand comes around his front to present the object that has been pulled from him.

Tears well up in Tyler’s eyes because he doesn’t know what hurts worse- the tearing and bleeding of his skin or the implication of a white feather covered in blood.

Josh’s first aid kit is cool.

It’s full of all sorts of stuff. Bandaids for one, of all different patterns and colors. He also has a bloody, plastic bag full of small feathers that have been pulled from the wound of Tyler’s back the past week.

Tyler takes the feather with trembling fingers from Josh's grip and cries silently as he adds it to their growing collection.

Josh peels the cover from a bandaid and pushes it against his bleeding skin without another word. He knows nothing will make this better.

Tears pour from Tyler’s eyes.

The sticky ends of the bandaids against the cuts in his skin sting.

**Author's Note:**

> Tumblr: marasamoon


End file.
